Refugees in their own land: The untold story of the internally displaced

Children queue for water at a camp for internally displaced
persons in Puntland, Somalia

War and natural disasters caused millions of people to leave
their homes and settle elsewhere in their country last year, says
a report from the Norwegian Refugee Council
(NRC).

The Guardian describes the internal displacement crisis as
“war’s greatest scandal”.

What is an “internally displaced person”?

Put simply, it is a refugee in their own country. However,
because they have not crossed a national border, internally
displaced persons (IDPs) are not classed as refugees.

Because of this, the UN’s refugee arm, UNHCR, for many years
said it was not responsible for these people. However, in 2005, it
signed an agreement with aid agencies to take the lead in
protecting them.

How many of them are there?

According to the NRC, 31 million people were forced to leave
their homes in 2016, but remained in their home countries. They
outnumbered refugees by a factor of two to one.

Of this number, 6.9 million left their homes due to violence or
conflict while the remaining 24.2 million were displaced by natural
disasters, around half of them by floods. Storms, wildfires and
earthquakes also cause internal displacement.

Why do IDPs not receive as much attention as refugees?

The NRC says the international community focuses more on
refugees in part because they are easier to define and
identify.

Alexandra Bilak, director of the Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre, said: “Not including internal displacement as an
integral part of [the] migration picture is very short-sighted…
If you redirect attention to the countries of origin and to really
understanding the driving forces of these movements it would be a
much more strategic approach and investment.”

Which countries were the worst affected in 2016?

The NRC separates internal displacement caused by conflict from
that caused by natural disaster.
With 922,000, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had the
most IDPs forced into homelessness by conflict, followed by Syria
(824,000), Iraq (659,000), Afghanistan (653,000), Nigeria (501,000)
and Yemen (478,000).

Famine caused many people to flee their homes in parts of
sub-Saharan Africa such as Somalia, Nigeria and South Sudan, but
conflict was also a factor in these countries.